While electrical power has been generally available in quantities to meet the needs of homeowners, business and industry, costs relating to the generation of such power have increased at a significant rate. Over the last decade or two, there has been a growing awareness that for adequate quantities of power to be available over the long term, consumers of such power must be attentive to and practice ways to reduce electrical power consumption.
The most dramatic and direct way in which such a consumer might be made aware of the need to conserve power is by being aware of the cost of power consumption. As the actual and projected costs of electrical power consumption increase, a consumer who becomes aware of such increases will naturally have an incentive to moderate consumption and eliminate needless uses of such power.
Whitman U.S. Pat. No. 4,751,495 (issued Jun. 14, 1988) shows a device used to detect and display the temperatures of several heat trace elements Although the Whitman device displays a parameter, temperature, which may arguably be related to electrical consumption, there is no indication that such device has the capability of displaying electrical power consumption rates or, for that matter, the cost of power being consumed.
Other patents which seem more directly related to a power consumption rate display device include Bonnema et al. U.S. Pat. No. D297,419 (issued Aug. 30, 1988), Trabucchi et al. U.S. Pat. No. D272,436 (issued Jan. 31, 1984) and Ault U.S. Pat. No. D268,030 (issued Feb. 22, 1983). The arrangements of the front panels shown in the foregoing patents fail to appreciate the importance of certain factors which bear on the arrangement of a panel layout.
Specifically, the arrangements in the Ault and Trabucchi et al. patents do not adequately recognize that many persons assimilate displayed information better if it can be "read" in a few, longer horizontal sweeps of the eyes rather than in a larger number of short, "choppy," vertically spaced sweeps. In addition, the arrangements illustrated in such patents do not adequately consider that multiple items of displayed information are better and more quickly understood if the displays are well spaced from one other rather than being crowded together. The latter can result in what might be termed "eye confusion."
In addition, none of the foregoing patents disclose a power consumption rate display device which detects voltage and current parameters in a building and which uses such parameters (as well as others) in a display device to compute and display various actual and projected cost figures. An improved power consumption rate display device which has a panel display "human engineered" for easy reading and adjustment and which permits a user to ascertain the actual and projected costs of consumed electrical power over various periods of time would be an important advance in the art.